Xiaomi wants half its revenue from offline sales

Apr 25, 2019 by The Passage Team

India’s largest smartphone brand Xiaomi Corp. is aiming to garner half of its overall revenue from offline sales and expects to have 10,000 retail stores in the country by the end of this year, Mint reported.

In terms of overall smartphone sales in India, 35% of phones are sold online and 65% offline. According to Counterpoint Research, Xiaomi led India’s smartphone market with 28% market share for the year 2018, recording highest ever shipments in the country.

Manu Jain, vice-president, Xiaomi, and managing director, Xiaomi India, told reporters, “Two years ago, we realized that Xiaomi’s share in online (smartphone sales) was 50% and in offline less than 1%...which was concerning to us for two reasons. Why were people not buying Xiaomi phones offline if they were buying our phones online. And we realized holding on to 50% (online market share) is a tough task... Hence for us growth can no longer come from online...the only way for us to grow is offline.”

Apart from the smartphone category where Xiaomi is the most popular, its growth is also coming from internet business where it has Mi Video, Mi Pay and Mi Music; retail business where it sells through offline stores and e-commerce platform Mi.com; and Internet of Things (IoT) devices such as fitness bands, Mi TVs and air purifiers.

Jain said the company has decided it will work with only one or two partner at every location and that’s how they decided to come up with Mi Preferred Partners. These are multi-brand stores that focus on Xiaomi products. As of now, Xiaomi works with 5,000 Mi Preferred Partners. It also has 1,500 Mi Store — mall-format stores for the rural market — across 300 cities and 19 states and is aiming to take the count to 5000 by the end of this year.

The Passage Team

The Passage is committed to creating in-depth content over technology industry across Asia with a focus on emerging startups in the technology, healthcare, education, food, tech, travel & mobility segments.